Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Russian Occupation Destroying Crimean Tatar Education

Paul
Goble

Staunton, August
25 – In an appeal to the Russian occupation authorities, Crimean Tatar teachers
say that Crimean Tatar instruction has been reduced across the Ukrainian
peninsula, a threat to the future existence of the nation because the rising
generation of Crimean Tatars is the first which in its “overwhelming majority”
does not know its native language well.

“Over the course
of the 26 years of the return of the Crimean Tatars to their motherland [after
Stalin’s deportation], a new generation has grown up,” the educators say. “This
is the first generation of Crimean Tatars who in their overwhelming majority
have not mastered their native language at a necessary level.”

But instead of promoting Crimean
Tatar instruction, the teachers say, the authorities are moving in the opposite
direction. Over the last year alone, the number of classes in Crimean Tatar for
first-year pupils on the peninsula has been reduced from 57 to 38, and the
opportunities for Crimean Tatars to study their language in Russian-language
schools cut as well.

That is the case, they point out,
even in areas where Crimean Tatars form a compact majority of the
population.In the Dobrovsky school of
Simferopol, 70 percent of the pupils are Crimean Tatars, but they are able to
study their language only in special, voluntary classes rather than as part of
the regular curriculum.

“In this school, in which the
majority of pupils are Crimean Tatars,” the teachers say, “it would be possible
to open every year not one but several first-year classes with Crimean Tatar as
the language of instruction.”That is
what the law requires, “but this unfortunately is being decided not by the
choices of parents as it should b but by the director.”

The Maarif association says that
this pattern holds in other schools across Crimea.And they report that parents are being given
forms to sign which already have written on them their supposed desire to have
their children study Russian rather than Crimean Tatar. At the same time, officials
say they will not offer Crimean Tatar instruction unless more want it!

The teachers asked Aksyonov to
intervene and order educational officials to obey the law as children start the
2015-2016 school year.But he is
unlikely to do so. After all, his subordinates have claimed that Crimean Tatars
don’t want Crimean Tatar education, and thus there is no reason to provide it.